Brains, Getting To Know You...

[elfs]

Learning to Cook

Kay Steiger brings us an essay on how people graduate from college not knowing how to cook a delicious meal, and concludes that there are three things schools ought to be teaching, but don't: basic financial skills, cooking delicious food (which by default is healthier than fast food), and a comprehensive sex education. I might add that the third ought to be like the second: health and pleasure ought to be on the curriculum.

Jim Manzi explains the credit problem in caveman terms

You and Og make a deal. When he returns from the hunt, he will give you two handfuls of meat. That's debt. If instead of promising you a fixed amount of meat, you agreed that he would give you a fixed share – say half – of what he brings back to the cave, that's equity. As an example calculation, if Og takes one handful of berries under such a debt contract and a second handful under such an equity contract, and if he comes back into the cave with, say, 10 handfuls of meat, then he has to give 2 handfuls to the debt holder and 5 handfuls (half of 10) to the equity holder. He is left with 10 - 2 - 5 = 3 handfuls of meat for his dinner. This combination of debt and equity is called his capital structure.

The Neocons vs. the Realists

Joshua Muravchik and Stephen Walt have a debate on the future of US foregn policy, and in a stunning ending to Muravchik's naive (and somewhat snark-filled) neoconservatism, Walt concludes:

Muravchik claims neoconservatives "treat purely moral concerns . . . as a higher priority than would realists," yet his response evinces little concern for ordinary human beings. He expresses no remorse at the suffering that neoconservative policies have wrought and seems mostly concerned that the neocons are now "taking their lumps" over Iraq. What matters to him is political standing in Washington, not the hundreds of thousands of needless Iraqi deaths, the millions of refugees who fled their homes, or the tens of thousands of patriotic Americans killed or wounded. So let us hear no more about the neoconservatives' "moral" convictions. Amid such company, the realists who opposed the war can stand tall.

Rachel Maddow dissects David Frum. A lesson to all.

I heard this last night on the radio, and was just blown away by it. David Frum opened the show by accusing Maddow, who is frequently chirpily sarcastic and funny about the topics she covers, of lowering public discourse to a level where eliminationist rhetoric became permissible.

Watch the video. Maddow knows what Frum is trying to do: provoke her into the kind of low-brow match Frum claims he's trying to dissuade. Maddow immediately throws out the funny and spends the next ten minutes in dead seriousness forcing Frum back onto topic. Frum, frustrated that he can't get away from what Digby calls "a substantive exchange on the issue of false equivalency in political discourse," just falls apart and concededs that the Republican party this round is engaged in a much nastier game than usual. Frum just totally loses his cool here, and everyone knows it. She pwned him.

Comments

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

When I went to junior high school (7th and 8th grade) we alternated gym class with twelve weeks each of cooking, sewing, and woodworking. Then the state got pissy and phys. ed. became daily and the others became electives.

In high school, phys. ed. was a daily requirement, health class and consumer ed were graduation requirements. We learned that abstinence was the best but otherwise to use condoms, how to read contracts, about credit cards, stock, advertising gimmicks, and some other consumer education things. After I took these classes they changed the requirements to allow you to test out of them, and I am told that the tests were far easier than the classes.

So basically anyone after me in my home town's school system graduated without knowing how to cook, to sew on a button, to stay out of debt, to grocery shop, or how to keep from getting or transmitting a social disease (including pregnancy).

[en-ki.livejournal.com]

Frum has an awesome Blinky Face, though. Maddow tries, but she's just not there yet.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree that it's a real shame that our public schools are so light on practical classes. While I do find plenty of uses for algebra and even geometry and some calculus in my everyday life, I would really have loved a class on cooking or finances or consumer awareness. Fortunately we had a pretty good sex ed program, complete with hilariously bad informational videos from the 70s for some comic relief after the real lessons.

And I won't say a word against physical education as long as its a good program. Our (pretty rigorous) P.E. program was universally reviled by the students, but in retrospect it's maybe the best thing that ever happened to me. It turned me from a chubby whale of a child into a marathon runner.

Anonymous Blog Reader #127

[hydrolagus.livejournal.com]

There's a nifty book called "The R.A.T. (Real-World Aptitude Test)" that's a good book to hand new teens and graduating seniors who don't get those practical classes (and adults who are surprised by being adults). Each topic starts with a test on how to do various aspects of that topic and on terms, followed by the answers which explain in reasonable detail the hows, whys, and whats. It's a friendly book that doesn't make the reader feel dumb about not already knowing the answers. Not as good as an actual home-ec class, but much better than nothing.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

Rachel Maddow is glorious. She handed that swine his head in a basket, and refused to sink to his level of bullshit. It's about damned time she got a show of her own.

Maddow/Frum

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

I went to that link with the Maddow/Frum interview. Maybe it was a different one than you saw.

First, before I start, I should say: I have never seen or heard of Maddow before. I know who Frum is chiefly because my friend Jerry Pournelle has mentioned him many times on his blog, in very critical terms, so I went into this thinking the guy was probably an idiot.

http://www.google.com/search?q=+site:www.jerrypournelle.com+%22the+egregious+Frum%22

From the beginning to the end, he was talking about the matter of tone in our politics, taking both parties to task for their role in this problem-- but with special focus on the Republican Party because that's what he knows best.

I heard nothing to disagree with. As he said, we're seeing an intensification of the ugliness of tone, and (in his opinion) Maddow's show is part of that. Although I have no idea what Maddow's show is like, Frum was right about the trend.

Early in this campaign it seemed like we'd finally be able to get beyond the mindless crap about "Bush stole the election(s)" and "Al Gore hates America" and let Obama and McCain duke it out over the issues.

In fact, I figured this would happen because of a sort of "mutual assured destruction" situation-- if the epithets really start flying, there could be a heck of a mess. (We haven't quite tipped over into that kind of catastrophe yet, but darned if a bunch of people don't seem to be cheering for it.)

Anyway, after Frum's opening statement, which made no mention of equivalency (or anything equivalent to it), Maddow asked if her tone is the equivalent of "bomb Obama, kill him, off with his head"? He declined to answer that question directly, but he said "the fact that other people fail in other ways is not an excuse for you failing in your way." Which is a clear statement that he doesn't regard Maddow's behavior as equivalent to that of those Republican yahoos, but that it IS still a problem.

As she went on, she herself admitted to using "sarcasm," "satire," and "teasing," and making jokes about serious topics just because that's what kind of show she has. Is she trying to be a less-funny version of the Daily Show or something?

Throughout the interview, Frum kept saying that everyone needs to elevate their tone. "We should be the change we want to see, or that we say we want to see." Maddow kept claiming he was asserting an equivalence, but the fact is, he wasn't, and what he said was very reasonable.

She kept trying to pick a fight and he kept not falling for it.

There's no doubt in my mind that she brought him on the show for this sole purpose, and then simply lied about why he was there and what he was saying. That's not at all how you described the interview here.

So what interview did you see?

. png

Re: Maddow/Frum

[elfs.livejournal.com]

If you've never seen Maddow interviewing people before, she does use wit and sarcasm very effectively. That she didn't with Frum was fascinating, because I heard someone trying very hard to dodge the question. She's hardly down in the ugliness that she depicted to Frum, and when Frum accused her to her face of being part of that ugliness, she stopped being funny. She became uncharacteristically serious.

If you look at the transcript, she let Frum do 80% of the talking. Frum tried to steer the conversation elsewhere. He even tried to start talking about Afghanistan, and Maddow quietly steered him back on track by saying, "I do think there's something qualitatively different about threats of violence and about accusations that people are un-American or that they would sell out their country." And she's right. And the latter part of that statement, that's what Palin (and McCain, at least in his advertising) is doing-- accusing Obama of being un-American, of being alien, of being deceptive and mysterious.

Frum tried to parry by saying that Maddow had recently made fun of Wolfowitz, and Maddow didn't even stop the conversation. She assumed her audience was smart enough to know who Paul Wolfowitz was, and said that since her show is only three weeks old and not particularly widely known she didn't believe that Wolfowitz would come onto it, but she took Frum deadly seriously and said that she would invite Wolfowitz on.

That masterfully left Frum with nowhere to go. And rather than make fun of Frum, she left him with the simple, "I respectfully disagree with your opinion," and left it that. Frum does the talking head shouting match thing quite a bit; Maddow quite often does not. He opened by claiming that her show "is an example of the problem, it's disregard for substantive issues that really are important." Maddow's show has consistently been one of the most substantitve shows on MSNBC (which, I understand, ain't saying much), and Frum's opener was an unwarranted implication of equivalency.

You, like many other conservatives, have tried to claim that there's a moral equivalence between Stephanie Miller mocking the Republican ticket by calling it "Grampy McSame and Caribou Barbie," and the Sacramento Republican Party suggesting "Let's waterboard baby-killing, terrorist-embracing Barack Obama." It's a false equivalence, and an obscene descent from mere mockery to blood libel and lynch mob mentality. Maddow pulled it up and made it explicit, and that's what I saw.

Re: Maddow/Frum

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

Yes, Frum did dodge the direct question of whether he really thought that sarcastic insults and death threats are "equivalent." But the question wasn't legitimate, anyway. Who would say they are? It was functionally equivalent to asking "are you stupid?" Nobody asks that question because they expect an answer. It isn't a question, it's a statement.

But Frum said that what Maddow is doing is different than what Republicans are doing, didn't he? So why would she go back to the question? Because she brought him on the show to harangue him, not to have a discussion.

The interesting thing wasn't that Frum was dodging the question-- it's that the question itself was a rhetorical device and Maddow kept asking it.

Your analysis of the Wolfowitz thing was lifted almost verbatim from Digby's Hullabaloo. Since it has nothing to do with the subject of this discussion, why did you include it? Did you have a word-count budget for your comment?

And when in heck did _I_ say "there's a moral equivalence between" sarcasm and death threats? Don't put words in my mouth. I expect you to know I don't think that's true. I also expect a writer to know the difference between a "moral equivalence" and a basis for comparison. Democratic activists have gone well beyond sarcasm and Republicans are hardly making serious death threats, so the comparison isn't as ludicrous as you make it out to be.

When in heck did I become a conservative, for that matter? I'm not surprised when some random Obamoid (darn it, I see I didn't just coin that term after all) accuses me of being a Christian Republican, but once again, you know better, or certainly ought to.

. png

Re: Maddow/Frum

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Actually, I liked Digby's analysis (nice of you to notice).

And you're right: Frum had been invited on the show to talk about something else, namely his recent trip to Afghanistan. However, he opened with a paragraph that was word for word the right-wing talking point of that day: that the MSM was talking about how the right had a nasty streak, and it was therefore incumbent upon those who got the talking point to counter that the left was just as bad.

Now, why would he do that?

Frum brought to the table something he had not been invited to bring, and Maddow spent the rest of the show putting aside her usual banter to dissect the talking point and making Frum look like an idiot. Nasty? Sure. Unfair? No. Frum painted a big red target on his forehead.

And it's an idiotic point. If there was that much nastiness on the left, FOX and Hannity and Limbaugh would be repeating it in tight rotation 24 hours a day seven days a week. They aren't. They can't. And Frum took off his own head, put it on a platter, and let her have at it.

Nah, you're neither Christian or Republican, but my sense is that recently, and in this exchange especially, your defensiveness doesn't seem objective.

Re: Maddow/Frum

[ideaphile.livejournal.com]

Why would Frum open by talking about the developing mean streak in the campaign?

Maybe it's because the previous 40 minutes of her show, and the VERY FIRST question she asked Frum, was directly about that subject, not about Afghanistan:

"One quote I wanted to ask you about: you said that 'those who press this Ayers line of attack are whipping Republicans and conservatives into a fury that's going to be very hard to calm after November'. What do mean by that word 'fury'?"

So where do you get off saying he wasn't "invited to bring" that subject to the table??

And when he tried to get back onto the topic of Afghanistan, and Maddow dragged the topic back to this "tone" thing, how is that HIS fault??

If I'm not being objective, it's because I'm reacting to what I see, and _I_ see way more mean-spirited campaigning from the left wing of the blogosphere. I don't believe that's because there _is_ more of that coming from the left wing; I'm only talking about what I see.

It happens that you account for, I would estimate, about a third of all the political blog posts I read in an average week, and you also generate about two-thirds of my WTF reactions. You seem to gather and distill bad analysis from other people's blogs and indeed, incautiously repeat other people's lies, way more often than I would have ever predicted possible a year ago.

I keep telling myself that this is usually because you've got a life, you've got other things to do. You're in a hurry, so you're not checking your sources and just not thinking enough before posting. Indeed, sometimes you admit that's what happened. Every time I post here, I hope that's the time you'll take the hint and slow down a little.

I mean, really, isn't it better to post less often than to have such a high error rate?

I've made it through eight years at MPR, six years of writing monthly magazine columns, and 197 blog posts (as of tomorrow) without ever screwing up badly enough to warrant a retraction. I'm not omniscient, I'm just careful. Anyone can do it. You should be more careful too.

. png